Profesional training courses in forest management planning, cartography, inventorying, timber harvesting, conception of forest infrastructures (roads, bridges, parks....) forwarding, controlled felling, first aid and health and safety at work.

Over the past few years ONFI has elaborated a range of different forest management planning modules destined at companies and administrations, and within the framework of the latters internal professional training programmes.

Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) courses

ONFI began offering training in Reduced Impact Logging techniques in 2002, and has today become one of the leaders in the field, currently offering such courses predominantly, but not exclusively to the private sector (notably in the techniques of controlled felling and planned forwarding). ONFI offers RIL training courses in the following domains:

Controlled felling;

Mechanical phases of forest harvesting (road and bridge construction, forwarding) ;

Driving and maintenance of forest machinery ;

Cartography and planned harvesting;

Health and Safety at work.

In total these training courses have been implemented since 2002 in some 20 companies operating in the Congo Basin and French oversees territories (notably French Guyana), with more than 500 forest workers having benefited. All companies involved in the training programme are implicated in the sustainable management of their concessions and are either moving towards certification of their management techniques or are already certified.  

Apart from a few rare exceptions such as the European Union's Centre for Economic Development (CDE) in Brussels, the vast majority of courses are financed by forest companies themselves.

Since early 2008, ONFI has witnessed an important increase in demand for its RIL training courses and has consequently invested in the development of its activities in order to fully respond to companies' needs in the domain. Today we dispose of 7 qualified in house trainers in this type of intervention in addition to an important network of associated experts.